Reading this essay was like sitting rapt listening to a great swelling piece of symphonic music. Starting small with just a flute solo, then more instruments coming in, building to a prolonged crescendo and then dying away to end with the solitary flute again. A great piece of music one realizes, a great piece of writing.
All things pass away, both the good and the bad. The music ends, the audience departs. Everything is in motion. Even the asteroid in the box might someday return home to space. But compassion and love never change. They are woven into the fabric of space itself. This is a certainty.
Thank you for your beautiful writings , which conclude with empathy , mindfulness, this faculty , which enables hope and meaningful actions…. The question is from whence does this uniquely human sapience , this faculty for empathy and hope arise? Its purpose ? It being bedded in eons of evolutionary process
Thank you, Mark. My sense is that empathy is not strictly human, though our articulation of it is, and that it's always been necessary for our survival, perhaps now more than ever.
agree not strictly just human, however the capacity for its articulation is,, and critical it is nurtured, being the basis for ethical behaviours, ethics of care, so urgently needed at this time. It's a long evolutionary journey from the meteorite to stirrings of life, to sapience, to empathy
Fabulous piece, I wish everyone on the planet could read it and absorb it. Our home, our "little gem of the heavens" is worth fighting for.
Are you a member of Citizens Climate Lobby? I urge you to look into it. It's a grassroots attempt at doing what we can do for the earth while we still can.
Thank you, Marilyn. I wouldn't mind that larger readership... but I'll do what I can with what I have. And I'll check out CCL; thanks for the suggestion.
I've been so unsettled and grouchy lately, and this essay gently lulled me into a bit of compassion not only for myself, but my neighbors -- hairless apes, feathered, furred, leafy. Your writing reminds me of the healing balm of attention and wonder. thank you.
Happy to help out, Julie. I write in part to lull myself into a bit of compassion, so I'm glad to hear that it ripples outward too. Thanks for the lovely comment.
Reading this essay was like sitting rapt listening to a great swelling piece of symphonic music. Starting small with just a flute solo, then more instruments coming in, building to a prolonged crescendo and then dying away to end with the solitary flute again. A great piece of music one realizes, a great piece of writing.
All things pass away, both the good and the bad. The music ends, the audience departs. Everything is in motion. Even the asteroid in the box might someday return home to space. But compassion and love never change. They are woven into the fabric of space itself. This is a certainty.
Beautifully said, Michael. Thank you. Certainly writing is the closest thing to music I can make.
They are closely related. By the way have you heard from dear Kathleen S. recently? I worry about her sometimes...
I haven't, but assume she's busy with the election after a summer of working in her gardens. Just a guess.
Wonderful writing, catching the cosmic and the immediate. Thank you, and thanks to Katharine Beckett Winship for re-stacking
Thank you, Peter. "The cosmic and the immediate" is a wonderful phrase. And yes, they are extensions of each other.
Thank you for your beautiful writings , which conclude with empathy , mindfulness, this faculty , which enables hope and meaningful actions…. The question is from whence does this uniquely human sapience , this faculty for empathy and hope arise? Its purpose ? It being bedded in eons of evolutionary process
Thank you, Mark. My sense is that empathy is not strictly human, though our articulation of it is, and that it's always been necessary for our survival, perhaps now more than ever.
agree not strictly just human, however the capacity for its articulation is,, and critical it is nurtured, being the basis for ethical behaviours, ethics of care, so urgently needed at this time. It's a long evolutionary journey from the meteorite to stirrings of life, to sapience, to empathy
Fabulous piece, I wish everyone on the planet could read it and absorb it. Our home, our "little gem of the heavens" is worth fighting for.
Are you a member of Citizens Climate Lobby? I urge you to look into it. It's a grassroots attempt at doing what we can do for the earth while we still can.
Thank you, Marilyn. I wouldn't mind that larger readership... but I'll do what I can with what I have. And I'll check out CCL; thanks for the suggestion.
I've been so unsettled and grouchy lately, and this essay gently lulled me into a bit of compassion not only for myself, but my neighbors -- hairless apes, feathered, furred, leafy. Your writing reminds me of the healing balm of attention and wonder. thank you.
Happy to help out, Julie. I write in part to lull myself into a bit of compassion, so I'm glad to hear that it ripples outward too. Thanks for the lovely comment.
Heartbreaking and beautiful and so clearly true. Your words echo my own heart. Thank you.
And thank you, Michelle, for the kind comment. Good to have you here.